Missionary Experiences

This took place back in the 1990s. I arrived in the mission field with 5 other sisters. One of them, who I'll call Sister Smith, was assigned a trainer who was just amazingly beautiful. I found out she paid for her mission by modeling professionally. The two were assigned to a small, coastal town.

A friend of mine recently read my book and wrote to me wondering why I hadn’t spent much time writing about the message we missionaries brought and why that message resonated with the people we baptized. I didn’t have a good answer, but after I thought about it, I realized that the message was not really an important part of being a Mormon missionary. Missions were about obedience to our leaders and increasing the number of church members.

Actually, what he said was that we needed to concentrate more on finding more golden converts, which he described as those would be strong priesthood leaders. This was back in 1997, and the church was noticing that its teenage elders were really good at converting girls, welfare recipients, and crazy people, but not so good at finding future bishops.

I've been struck by the seemingly high number of missionaries returning for "medical reasons."
What's the deal? What's actually going on? Is there something going on we're not aware of? Or have missions actually become more dangerous?

After mentioning that I was a California San Diego Alumni, I was shocked to find there were a lot of us on here. In retrospect I should not be surprised because you get exposed to a lot of things in San Diego that would make you question your testimony. That, and the mission had three presidents in a roll who would make you question your testimony.